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Boulder's Cooperative Housing

Better Living Through Social Technology

BoCHA

[Editor's note: While Boulder, CO is home to a variety of housing cooperatives and co-housing communities, it is currently officially illegal for more than 3 unrelated people to share one home. The Boulder City Council will vote this coming Tuesday, December 6th, on whether or not to officially make housing coopertives legal. Below are two videos from the Boulder Community Housing Association on the many benefits that shared housing provides to its members and to the larger environment.]

[Update: the cooperative housing ordinance was successful, passing the City Council with a 7-2 vote on January 4th, 2017. Congratulations to Boulders cooperators!]

Why We Live in Co-ops

Why do people choose to live in Boulder's housing cooperatives? A wide variety of current and former co-op members give their reasons.

Please help us make this kind of community oriented shared housing legal in Boulder. Email council@bouldercolorado.gov and bcc: legalizecoops@gmail.com, and tell them to pass the co-op ordinance on December 6th, with no additional restrictions on top of the many already included, and to allow co-ops with up to 12 members in a home.

Social Norms as an Energy Efficiency Technology

There's a technology that can cut your home energy use by a whopping 75%, and reduce your living expenses by more than half. But it's been banned in Boulder, Colorado and many other cities across the US...

Our social norms -- and by extension our laws -- around sharing housing in the US amount to a kind of legally mandated consumption. Given what we know about climate change (and Boulder's housing costs!), how can we morally justify criminalizing sharing?